Meet Brian

Brian is the name of my brain. I only call him by name when I need to exhort him to produce. As in, "C'mon, Brian, you can do it! Work!"

Brian is performing very badly tonight. Brian is spouting bitchiness at random. Tonight, he observed thusly: just because you are from a different continent doesn't mean you can't be shallow!

Brian is reacting to a certain houseguest situation in his host body's apartment. Brian's host body is spending as much time as possible at the NYU law school library in order to avoid "conversation" with his aforementioned houseguests. Brian reviles criminal law reading, but he reviles interminable inanities even more. Brian chooses law.

Brian is also the entity that directs me to sit in one particular place in the library. I have to stake out the spot when the private prime study rooms in Furman Hall are taken. The library is entirely subterranean, as if to emphasize that law students are sallow, gaunt, underground moles with poor vision and a tendency to scurry. There are about twenty tables aboveground, on the first floor, but this floor also happens to be one of the social hotspots of my overly cramped school, and here people like to steal candy from the Lexis-Nexis table and then blather at TOP VOLUME into their cell phones. So the only option for me--she who desires natural light but little noise, who already wears earplugs for 12-15 hours of the day (seriously--for sleep and study), whose eyes are rotting in their sockets from the fluorescent lighting and the poorly prescribed contact lenses--is to find the spot under the skylight, turn off all the lights around me, take out my 100 pounds of books, take my laptop from its protective neoprene condom, plug in my laptop, remove my 4-color pen, highlighter, and pencil from my backpack, locate my earplug cannister, put in my earplugs, take out the foldable reading stand that Lo bought me for my 25th birthday, put one of my textbooks onto the reading stand, check my schedule for my night's homework, and then, after this is done, start reading.

This is award-winning nerd procedure, but I have clearly embraced my nerd-dom. The nerdiest part is that I profoundly prefer reading my books [UPDATE: the first edition of this sentence explained that I "profoundly prefer eating my books," which you and I know is a lie. I eat only magazines, not books, please. I'm on a glossy diet.] to chitter-chatting with my classmates, and am grateful for Schulhofer's Criminal Law for protecting me from the most awkward manifestations of my social retardation. ("I think he's trying to say that I don't have breasts!" I blurted, attempting a joke, very professional-like, during a conference call last week. Silence ensued.) (Then: S: "I'm ordering the avocado-hijiki roll." Me: "That's great. [beat] [very genuinely interested] What are you planning to order?" Silence ensued.)

That having been written, I have now successfully blogged for half an hour in lieu of studying. Way to go, Brian!